2022 In Between Grand Slam Thread

I think we're all agreed that he didn't need the money (not that there was any).

So why did he go to the Belgrade Tennis Association awards?

their is no excuse.

I think its 14 days of isolation in Serbia so while I might had a little pity if on day 11 he said "**** this I need to get out of the house"...he did not even make a token attempt to isolate and the next day went about his business without a care in the world.

That's dire.

I'm not making excuses for what he did, there' s a circle that's impossible to square here. It's either that he knew he wasn't actually positive or he thought there wasn't anything wrong with what he did. My suspicion is the former, but we'll never know that.

But what nobody has asked in the midst of all the opprobrium is why did he go to the Belgrade Tennis Association awards? What did he have to gain from going to them? Money, titles? Or is it a question that the reactionaries would rather not consider.

The mother who said that her son had been "subject to torture and harassment" during his stay! More considered - emm.

I tell ya one thing, whether you're pro vaccine or anti vaccine or pro Nole or anti Nole or pro Serbia or anti Serbia or pro Australia or anti Australia....you cannot but admire the man's resiliency and fortitude and unwavering belief...

Go and win number 21, Nole!!!!!!

Would probably have been the case before the court case. But now that a court of law has found in his favour, it's no longer as simple as whether he needs to be vaccinated or not to get in. There's now the potential optics of legislature riding roughshod over the judiciary to be considered. I don't recall the judge highlighting any deadline Djokovic missed, but I might have missed that. The judge did say, "what more could this man have done?", so I don't think in the eyes of the court any deadline was missed.

To answer your question, I think he's staying, at least for tomorrow, but if the Morrison govt before the start of the AO think a majority of the public would want him gone, they'll deport him. But once the AO begins, he's there until he loses.

Quite similar to here. There a lot of people in Serbia that don't like Djokovic and the last week would have seen a doubling down of existing positions.

• Many Serbs are suspicious of Djokovic because he doesn't eat meat.
• His attraction to Rasputin-like gurus (Imaz and Jafarieh) is also a cause for concern.
• According to my nephew, young people don't like him and only people over 40 support him. But that's anecdotal and maybe my nephew is hanging out with the wrong crowd.
• Many are critical of his tennis centre. He got a lot of grants from the govt for it, as long as he brought in big tournaments. He employs his family to run it. Some of the nepotism claims might have a basis, but most people would accept that Djokovic feels an immense debt to his family for everything they sacrificed for his career, both parents and siblings. It's also a reason why he won't criticise his father for his more inane utterances.
• Critical of his family, or to be more specific, his father and his uncle who apparently is worse. His mother is generally considered to be normal, as is Jelena. Jury is out on Djorde but my son thinks he's sound because he gave him a fist bump last summer. Farage inviting himself in and the family not telling him to fcuk right off does get a lot of criticism.
• He would get a lot of support because of his strong religious beliefs.
• He would get a lot of support, and some criticism, for his bigger Balkan view of things and not just focusing on Serbia. That's in no small part due to his mother being a Croat. This again would have been a factor in the ill-advised Adria tour. As with a lot of things Novak, motivation-good, thinking-it-through-bad.
• He gets no more criticism than anyone else over there for not taking a vaccine. Only half the country is vaccinated, there's a lot of vaccine hesitancy, so it's a lot easier to be a holdout over there than over here.
• I haven't heard any criticism for him not wearing a mask for the awards. The tennis community is very supportive of him, he gives loads of his time encouraging the sport and for those kids at the awards, it would have been the highlight of their year. Most teenagers in Serbia have naturally contracted Covid by now. I doubt if he was the only one in that photo Covid-positive, if he even was. The Chinese vaccine provided much less protection that Pfizer or even AZ so even those who were vaccinated were contracting the strain before Delta.
• The stamp ceremony was on the 16th, but the photos were uploaded on the 17th. I have the stamp (and every Serbian/Yugoslav stamp back to 1963)
• He gets a lot of criticism when he loses; a lot of Serbs changed from being supporters to being critics when he had his slump.
• As with all countries, you have to be cautious about what you read in the media and where you read/hear it. Most of the media is state (Vucic) controlled although for something like this, they wouldn't bother exercising much control. The rags will nevertheless try to whip up outrage wherever they can. The biggest tabloid there ran a headline that "Nadal doesn't want Djokovic to play in the AO" whereas what Nadal actually said was complimentary towards Djokovic.